I love Joe Haldeman. The Forever War is one of my favorite books of all time. His short stories are brilliant. I will buy anything with his name on it without even reading the back cover (not even OSC has that kind of brand loyalty from me).

So a new company starts renting the offices across the hall from us. We share a break room. They are programmers, working on some new mapping software for the government. Terrain mapping or something. The guys are typical programmer types. Fat middle aged guys with t-shirts and pony tails.

They like to drink our coffee. And, I mean, we're pretty cool about it. We don't mind. What pisses *me* off is when they drink the last of it and don't make another pot. It was happening a lot, so I started spying. When one of them would go into the breakroom, I would listen for the distinctive spitting sound of a coffeepot going empty.

A couple days ago I heard it, and rushed in triumphantly to engage the enemy. Somehow, when I saw the short, dumpy, gray haired pony tail dude putting sugar in his coffee, I lost my will for the fight. I just said, "How's it going?" He said hi and didn't flee, so I chatted him up.

It turns out that he was an assistant teacher at MIT. He is one of the world's foremost experts on satellite terrain mapping, or somesuch. He is working with an old pal (also from MIT) to start this company that is revolutionizing terrain mapping software for military applications.

Joe Haldeman teaches writing at MIT. This guy knows Joe. He calls him 'Joe'. If Joe ever comes to town (he comes out to Portland from time to time) this guy is going to see that I get an introduction.

Sometimes you get cool stuff by being nice I guess. Also, the guy said he would tell all his coworkers to refill the coffee pot.